The relationship of IT Performance on Business Performance is becoming more evident today as service providers strive to meet the dynamic rate of change that is required to meet business requirements.  It is unfortunate that all too often the evidence for the lack of IT performance is brought to the forefront because processes break down, cost overruns occur, and business outcomes suffer.  When the flow of work is broken the service provider is not enabled to provision service at the rate of demand that is required and the cost of provisioning tends to soar. When we look at the lifecycle for the deployment of a new or changed service we recognize that there are many roles, functions and activities that a service provider must manage and control.  When the development activities are silo’d from deployment and operational activities the value stream tends to break down and IT staff suffer.   This breakdown often results in frustrated staff that feel that ...

You may have heard a lot of buzz around the DevOps movement that is taking hold in today’s industry where service management quality and efficiency are paramount.   The term "DevOps" was popularized through a series of "DevOps Days" starting in 2009 in Belgium and it is said by those present that they knew they were witnessing something very different and unique.  They knew they were on the verge of something that would change the way that all service providers designed, developed and delivered services in every industry.  Since then, there have been DevOps Days conferences held in India, Brazil, Australia, Germany, and Sweden and other parts of the globe including the United States.  So what is it? Business demand is increasing! That is not news. The need to produce services fast is increasing!  We know that methods such as Agile, Scrum and others that have increased capability for development of products but we must recognize that as only one eleme...

During the lifecycle of a service, it will progress through thirteen different statuses as it moves from the portfolio into the service catalogue and finally into a retired state.   We are going to look at four of the statuses, that are undertaken within the service portfolio that help to bring a service from an idea, suggestion request or plan to one that has been commissioned and authorized to meet a set of defined objectives. They are define, analyze, approve and charter. The process for initiating a service can come from any number of sources and take a number of different formats.  For simplicity we will just refer to these as requests. These requests can come in the form of a strategic plan, an enhancement from BRM, an opportunity for improvement from CSI or as a suggestion from some other service management process.  Define: Here we define the desired business outcomes, opportunities, utility and warranty requirements.  A definition of the service its...